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Comment by zpeti | Hacker News Reader

> SpaceX is a bad replacement for a well funded NASA

Please, explain exactly how you came to this conclusion. And use numbers, costs of R&D, costs of launches, etc.

I'm absolutely baffled you could think this.

SpaceX is a bad replacement for a well-funded NASA with a clear mission that advances human exploration of space, without being beholden to political corruption, and with a driven and dedicated administrator.

Of course, so is NASA itself.

SpaceX is for profit, so it’s goals need to be profitable monetarily. NASA is government funded so it can focus on important things that may not be profitable monetarily.

How is that working out in terms of actual dollars spent? Who’s more efficient at spending $1 including profit in that?

Your theory doesn’t hold up to actual numbers

I read recently a pretty good take on this. It goes something like, in order of most risky to least risky:

- Government funding is for super high risk, high reward long shots that may never work or prove useful.

- Then, VC funding when it's high risk, but within a few years horizon of working or proving useful.

- Last, public funding for stuff that's obviously going to work.

NASA is in the business of de-risking the edge. Then VC-backed stuff like SpaceX/Rocket Lab/Relativity Space can come and do the still-risky-but-still-less-risky bets. Public companies like Boeing/Lockheed Martin can be in the business of launching rockets as is well known and done for decades now.

Surely VCs aren't putting continuous money into space, and it's government contracts paying most of the way. Scale of cost is a bit high for VC

SpaceX doesn't seem super interested in science, like you know probes 'n stuff. I would say that NASA was never super interested in reducing the cost to access space though. They complement each other very well.

I am not talking about cost at all. More about commercial interests vs public interests.

Elon Musks stance on fighting climate change seems to be that we can just solve the problem with technology without doing much about endless consumption and waste, failing that mitigating the issues for whoever can afford to, starting with biohazard mode on your Tesla and ending with escaping to Mars. I don't want all our space tech in the hands of such a person. Happy to see China is still investing more heavily.

Out of curiosity, how well do you think fighting climate change through reducing consumption and waste is going? Well enough to discount alternatives?

Inversion of cause and effect. At least where I live our neoliberal and conservative parties love to defer to technology we don't have yet and might never have (we once had a fun case of "flying taxis" being lauded as a solution to congestion too) to justify doing nothing about emissions.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do both, but we have solutions now. Be it nuclear power, penalties for food waste, subsidies for public transport infrastructure, taxing fossil fuels... you get the idea. We just need politicians to stop their wishful thinking - the kind fueled by Elon Musk - and confront the realities of the situation

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